The secret place

The secret place is a feeling more than a place. Entrance to it comes only during the most precipitous of emotions. Perhaps a hint of nostalgia, a certain smell, a magical phrase, a lost love, similar things are keys to this place. They always come unexpected, almost uncalled for. And yet, at the same time, you realize deep in you heart that you’ve been yearning for this place, for this feeling, for longer than you can remember.

Tonight I glimpsed this place. I was reading about an actress’s mysterious sexual orientation and how she was an atheist and something about the god of gaps. Yes, I later read and relized the god of gaps was just a fallacy, but in reading it, I imagined a God of the in between. And then quick as a breath I was transported to this place. To this eternal feeling that I had been missing for so long. Tonight this place was a vision of open water in the middle of the night. Framed with green shrubbery, and adorned with stars. The moon is mirrored on the black water.

And the image still sticks with me, but the feeling fades. It is something like this though. So fleeting and yet everlasting. It was a moment when I was so grounded in the mortal and everyday, our world that is so temporary, and yet, there was this talk of a God of gaps, and children with no father, and hidden love so tangible but a mystery to the world. And then I was filled with this…feeling. A feeling I could never get tired of because it makes me feel young and yet omniscient, magical and renewed. The secret place seems much like heaven. And I remember I kept thinking, if I could spend the rest of my life writing about this secret place, keeping I alive describing it in detail, as it evolves, I would be content, I would feel fulfilled.

Sometimes I wonder whether I write because I truly enjoy writing or only because writing and art are a vehicle in which I get in touch with this feeling, with my “secret place.” I guess it could be considered a fine line between “living to write,” and “writing to live.”